Another Sunday morning saw the Young Adult Class gathering at the Confluence United Methodist Church. Twenty-nine year-old Steve had cooked up a doozy of a lesson for this morning. His ornery streak had come out when he read the Song of Solomon for the first time in his life. He knew this book would be the lesson for this Sunday as soon as he read,
"As an apple tree among the trees of the wood,
so is my beloved among young men.
With great delight I sat in his shadow,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste,"
Such poetic hints of naughtiness in the Bible could not be passed by without the class's comments.
Now this may not be such a big deal in a normal young adult Sunday school class, but the Confluence Young Adult Class was anything but normal. Its youngest member was seventy-six years old, and eighty-three was the average age.
When the class had started, fifty-eight years ago, the name had seemed fitting enough. As the members aged, they had tried to change the name many times. But they could never agree on a new name. Irv had even given a black eye to Don during one of the arguments over a new name. After the black eye, everyone agreed to remain forever the Young Adult Class.
You might think the class contentious, but that was not really the case. They liked each other well enough, and they agreed on the important things like the doctrine of salvation through faith alone. It was the little things that caused disagreement, like what to name their class… and who should teach their class.
Steve, who had been attending another Sunday school class, had won the honor of teaching because he had only lived in Confluence for about a year, and none of the class members knew anything about him that would disqualify him from the role of teacher. Of course, that could change after this Sunday's lesson.
Steve's orneriness was what caused him to choose "Song of Solomon" for a Sunday school lesson, but it was not orneriness alone. He had been dating Diane, almost as long as he had lived in Confluence. Things had been getting very serious between them, and he had begun thinking about asking her to move in with him. Although he knew this did not square with the teachings of the church, still he wondered if there might be some way to justify the action if Diane agreed to it. Of all the books in the Bible, "Song of Solomon" held the most potential for justifying two people living together.
Steve had thought about starting the lesson by reading three verses from chapter seven that seemed to get right to the heart of his moral dilemma.
"How fair and pleasant you are,
O loved one, delectable maiden!
You are stately as a palm tree,
and your breasts are like its clusters,
I say I will climb the palm tree
and lay hold of its branches."
"But… Steve was just ornery, not stupid! So, he started the class with more innocent verses from the second chapter.
"The voice of my beloved!
Look, he comes
leaping upon the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
My beloved speaks
and says to me:
'Arise, my love,
my fair one, and come away;
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love,
my fair one, and come away.'"
After he finished reading, Steve looked around at the class members. As he expected, he had a solid hold on everyone's attention, except for Agnes who was still fiddling with her hearing aids.
Steve's lesson plans were always simple. Read a passage from the Bible, identify the controversial issue in the passage, and then sit back and watch the Young Adults go at it. It was a very successful plan. Today would be no different.
Steve waited while Agnes fiddled with her hearing aids. This was something she did every Sunday, and she never seemed to get them tuned right. But even with the hearing aids tuned right, Agnes still only managed to catch one or two words in any conversation.
Steve finally had to give up waiting on Agnes and he began his lesson, "I assume that you have all read this book, 'Song of Solomon,' at some time or other." He assumed correctly. "This book never even mentions the name of God. So why is it in the Bible?"
Irv hesitated no more than three seconds before he blurted out what was to him the obvious answer. "God wanted us to know what was normal, sexually speaking. God knew that the homosexuals would try to convince us that what they do is normal, and so God lays out the whole thing. Right there in the Bible, in black and white, so we can see what God really wants."
"Oh Irv," Sophie responded, "why do you take everything in the Bible, and use it for ammunition against the homosexuals? That's not what this book is about. It's about love. Plain and simple, this is a book of love poetry."
"Sophie! I thought you agreed that homosexuality is wrong," Irv scolded.
"I do," Sophie answered, "but I still do not think that this book has anything to do with homosexuality."
Just then a horrible squeal filled the room. Ethel yelled across the table, "Agnes, your hearing aids are squawking again!"
Agnes saw Ethel yelling something at her. "What's that?" Agnes said, "Is that noise coming from me?" Agnes stepped up her efforts of fiddling with her hearing aids.
Ethel turned from Agnes and restarted the conversation, "I've read some Bible commentaries, because I wondered the same thing that Steve is wondering about this book. A lot of those commentaries say that "Song of Solomon" is a book full of symbols. The young maiden is really Israel they say, and the handsome young man is God. The two have a real attraction for each other, but it is a rocky romance, just like the Old Testament says. Yet, in the end, everything comes out happy "For love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame."
"Ethel," Don interrupted, "I'm impressed. You can quote from "Song of Solomon?"
"I may still be single, Don Leonard, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the love between a man and a woman." And as if to prove her point, she quoted another verse, "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned."
"You tell him, Ethel!" Blanche blurted out. "I've been married six times, and I still believe in that "flashes of fire" and "raging flame" stuff. Of course, all six of my husbands were flashes in the pan, but I haven't given up looking for the one who can really light my fire! Real love is worth everything you've got. But you can't buy it. You either have it, or you don't. Take Sophie and Don for instance. You two have it, that's for sure. You sure are two very lucky people."
"Blessed, not lucky," Don corrected. "Blessed by God, with a woman just as beautiful and comely as the one described in "Song of Solomon. Sixty-two years next month, and every day of our marriage I have gotten on my knees and given thanks to God for this wonderful woman who agreed to share life with me." Without thinking, Don reached out and took Sophie's hand, entwining his fingers with hers. It was a totally natural gesture, one repeated many thousands of times over the years.
Steve saw the gentleness and love in Don's gesture. He knew it was real. There was nothing put on for others to see. These two respected each other, and truly enjoyed each other's company. Neither would be whole without the other. And their love was proven stronger than death, because it survived the death of two of their four children. One was six and the other just two years old when an influenza epidemic took them both to an early grave. Some marriages don't survive such things, but Don and Sophie just ended up loving each other all the more.
Steve had always hoped that he could one day have a marriage like Don and Sophie. He wondered whether Diane could be the one.
"I remember when your love wasn't always a blessing," Ethel told Don. "Remember when the teacher caught you two kissing behind the school house? You almost got expelled from school."
"You said yourself," Sophie answered Ethel, "love is a raging flame. It's not always easy to control the passion, especially when you're young and new to the feeling."
At this point, Blanche turned to Steve and said, "You asked why this book was in the Bible, and I think Sophie just put her finger on the answer. I know you thought you could get us old fogies all stirred up with the sexy stuff in "Song of Solomon," but I hope you noticed that you didn't really ruffle many feathers in this group. I look at people like Don and Sophie and I read "Song of Solomon," and I think I have a fairly good understanding of what the love between a man a woman is all about. Simply stated, Steve, God gave us this book so that people new to the feeling of love would know that what they are feeling is according to God's plan. Especially for young people like you, passion is hard to control and even harder to understand. It's not about sex. It's about love.
Just then, Agnes got her hearing aid tuned in. "What's that you're saying," she questioned Blanche. "Are you talking about sex? I agree. It's just terrible! There is just too much sex on TV anymore. I think that every TV should come with a little black box, and every time a naked body appears on the screen the black box should make the screen go blank."
"Agnes," Blanche shouted, "we're not talking about sex! We're talking about love!"
"Oh, love," Agnes said. "Well, I'm all for that. I have some really good memories in that department."
Then a miracle happened at Confluence United Methodist Church, everybody in the Young Adult Sunday school class went silent. Agnes had said it, and everyone sitting in the room agreed with her. They were all for love. And now, each person in the class sat quietly, remembering their own experiences with this holy gift.
Steve looked around at his silent students. He could see a spark in their eyes. Like little flashes of fire coming to the surface. He had seen the same spark in Diane's eyes when she looked at him. Suddenly he realized what it meant. It's not about sex. It's about love. That's what "Song of Solomon" said. That's why it was in the Bible, so people new to the feeling would understand what it was all about.
Now he understood, and now he knew he would never ask Diane to move in with him. He wanted what Don and Sophie had, and moving in together was not the way to get that. Tomorrow he would do something much wiser. He would visit a jeweler during his lunch hour, then take Diane out to a nice restaurant, maybe the new one over in Centerville. Then they would drive up to Clear Lake. And under the stars of heaven and the approving gaze of God, he would by the grace of God hear Diane say that she would consent to share life with him as his wife.
The flashes of fire had become a raging flame. Many waters, even floods, could never put it out, for it was growing stronger than even death.
Questions for Meditation, Discussion or Preaching
Copyright 2020. Robert D. Ingram, 32746 Jourden Rd., Albany, Ohio 45710 (dr.bobingram@gmail.com). Used by permission.
